Women Must Get Equal Rights

International Women’s Day is celebrated on 8 March across the world as a day for women’s rights. In many countries, a public holiday is given on this day and women gather on a large scale to discuss their rights. The United Nations has appealed to give equality to women in every field on this day in 2025. For the first time in 1908, 15,000 women gathered in New York for fixing working hours, respectable salary and right to vote and celebrated Women’s Day while agitating for their rights. In 1910, at the International Conference of Working Women, Clara Zetkin, leader of the Social Democratic Party, Germany, proposed to celebrate Women’s Day at the international level. After this, it started being celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. In 1914, International Women’s Day was celebrated in most countries. During the Second World War and the Russian Revolution, the day when the movement was started on the question of ‘Bread and Peace’, it was decided to celebrate March 8 as International Women’s Day all over the world. In 1975, the United Nations recognized it. In India too, the progressive democratic streams celebrate this day.

Today, Women’s Day is more important because the era in which we are living is the era of capital and technology. This era has many achievements and many challenges too. Women have a big task of organizing themselves socially, culturally and above all politically. Along with this, their task is to organize others too, so that they can increase their initiative for the development of society and the democratic Republic of India.

Women face many types of inequality every day. Economic inequality is increasing in the country. The resources of the country are getting concentrated in a very small part of the society. Unemployment and inflation have increased rapidly due to the lack of expected development of technology and capital. People’s purchasing power is decreasing, so many children are not able to get proper education, food and health facilities. Women will have to communicate with people for a new economic combination. Due to lack of proper payment for labour, the condition of women from farm to working and daily wage women in cities is not improving. We do not have adequate participation in enterprise, skill development, educational institutions and health services. In the political field, whether it is parliament or the organization of political parties, their number is much less than expected and even less in the leadership role. Therefore, it is a historical responsibility to establish the women’s group as an independent political force. Such experiments have been done in many countries of the world where women have registered their role in governance and administration on the basis of their political mobilization.

A big question is that of women’s education, health and employment. If we see, even now the literacy rate of women is very low compared to men. In a very backward Dalit-tribal dominated district like Sonbhadra, it is almost half. Due to the lack of degree colleges for Tribal girls, despite their desire to contribute to society, they have to leave their studies midway, due to which a huge talent is being wasted. If we look at the employment situation, in recent years a large number of girls have been forced to go to other states to work. These girls are being made to work for 12 hours a day for a very low wage of Rs 10,000 or Rs 12,000, due to which they are facing many health related problems.

The Government of India has talked big about making ‘Lakhpati Didi’. It has been said that 1 crore Lakhpati Didis have been made in the country and there is a plan to make 3 crore more Lakhpati Didis. When we investigated this in depth, we found that in fact the women self-help groups, through which Lakhpati Didi is being talked about, have not made much difference to the income of women. Generally, most of the money from the loan that women are taking from government women self-help groups is spent on routine items like treatment, marriage, family work etc. The situation is such that the government is charging interest at the rate of 13.5 percent per annum. At the same time, a large number of women are in the clutches of microfinance companies which are charging interest up to 30 percent per annum. They are trapped in such a web that it is becoming very difficult for them to get out of it. In many places, we ourselves saw in our survey that they have been forced to sell even their land.

Generally, the health condition of women is very poor throughout the country. Despite running the Pradhan Mantri Matrutva Suraksha Abhiyan, still many women die at the time of delivery. The figures that have come in Sonbhadra itself are very painful. According to government data, 54249 pregnant women had registered in the district from April 2024 to January 2025, out of which 10294 pregnant women are in the high-risk category. Similarly, 3594 pregnant women are severely anaemic. In Sonbhadra, the level of haemoglobin is generally very low among the people and the condition of women and children is also very bad. In the name of nutrition at Anganwadi centers, there is only a formality. Here quality and adequate nutritional food should be given to women and children and there is also a demand to provide government assistance of at least Rs 10,000 to pregnant and lactating mothers.

Today the situation is that a large number of women have been employed by the government as Anganwadi, Asha, Mid-Day Meal Cooks. These people are paid less honorarium than MNREGA workers. Anganwadi workers are being retired at the age of 62 without giving gratuity and pension. The government is not ready to accept the orders of the Supreme Court and High Court. In the ongoing budget session, the government has made it clear that it has no plans to increase the honorarium of Anganwadi workers. Despite having technical knowledge in the enterprise, due to the lack of adequate resources and capital, the role of women is not able to emerge as per their potential. Women expect the government to provide special grants for employment, skill development, ITI, polytechnic, self-defense for women and fix their respectable pay scale. Also, there are many vacant government posts, immediate steps should be taken to fill them according to the ratio and qualification of women, so that Nari Shakti can contribute to nation building.

The government repeatedly says that it does not have resources and on the basis of this logic, it is continuously cutting the budget from ICDS, health and education. But the economists of the country say that if proper tax is imposed on the property of 200 high net worth families of the country and black money is controlled in the economy, then resources can be raised on a large scale and a respectable life can be provided to common citizens including women.

Today, due to the decline in moral and cultural values, the question of women’s safety is becoming even more serious. Due to the continuous protection and glorification of rapists and people who believe in feudal values by RSS and BJP, the morale of the domineering people in the society has increased a lot and they are continuously attacking women. Equality has been talked about in the constitution but at the ground level, the sense of considering a woman as a citizen has still not developed. Due to this, questions like equal pay for equal work, share in land and property have not been resolved even today. In Uttar Pradesh itself, women have the right to property but their rights are not registered in agricultural lands.

All in all, adequate funds should be allocated in the sub-plans of the budget for women’s security, employment, enterprise, development, education and health. It is hoped that on this International Women’s Day, there will be a meaningful dialogue for socio-economic planning, security, education, health, peace, cultural diversity and protection of the environment.

Dinkar Kapoor, State General Secretary, All India People’s Front